Saturday, April 02, 2005
life or death
this last week there has been an abundance of news in regards to feeding tubes. first the dead woman in florida who had been kept alive for 15 years by a feeding tube, which has subsequently been turned off (she is now dead as of yesterday). the second tube, was the one going up the pope's nose (his real nose, not the ass of the chicken). over the past week with these two topics dominating the news, i have had some time to ponder this topic. truly you have to laugh about the absurdity of both. even worse is the absurdity of the people getting so emotionally charged over these issues, particularly the dead woman they were keeping alive.
what strikes me as most odd is the fact that (specifically) the ultra-christian-right has such a huge belief that it is their responsibility to keep a dead woman alive, when on the same day, they are sanctioning the actions of their president and country in blowing up and shooting dead perfectly healthy people in iraq, afghanistan, and inside their own borders. it forces me to question, do they have any regard for human life?
on the same side of the coin, these same people argue over the "right to life" for an unborn fetus, irregardless of a mothers "right" to choose. i don't want to get too deep into this argument today, but this whole point of view has its own absurdities. especially, when the biggest universal "right" is completely ignored by this same ultra-conservative-christian-right wing-idiots, and that is the right to die.
if anything, our short time on this planet, should teach us nothing else but, we will die. we all will die, and there is not a single thing we can do about it. we can try to prolong our own lives through diet exercise, medicines, or meditations, however the very apparent truth is- you live, you die. so what of it? i mean these people hold life so valuable, that they fail to recognize that death holds something even more precious and valuable to life. death completes the circle, it is the yang to the yin of existence. through the act of dying, all living creatures plant, animal, or human, transcend these worldly boundaries and become equal, regardless of race, religion, or region, in perhaps our most beautiful and ultimately final moment on this earth. even more fascinating is that after death our bodies decompose and all those protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up everything combine with everything else in the world and we can truly become one with the universe. now how far off is this idea from any religious preachings?
i guess we can argue about this all day, however, my point is- this if you are going to have so much respect for life then you must intrinsically have equal respect for death (which should lead to obvious conclusions about the euthenasia debate). i too have learned another lesson, that life is short, very very short. life, so you better play it all out, otherwise you may be regretful when your life does eventually go full circle. i wonder if the pope has realized this while he lies there with a tube going up his nose? then again i think about times when i have put a tube up my nose, it has been nothing but good times. makes you wonder just a little bit... smile, cause it is only life and death.
what strikes me as most odd is the fact that (specifically) the ultra-christian-right has such a huge belief that it is their responsibility to keep a dead woman alive, when on the same day, they are sanctioning the actions of their president and country in blowing up and shooting dead perfectly healthy people in iraq, afghanistan, and inside their own borders. it forces me to question, do they have any regard for human life?
on the same side of the coin, these same people argue over the "right to life" for an unborn fetus, irregardless of a mothers "right" to choose. i don't want to get too deep into this argument today, but this whole point of view has its own absurdities. especially, when the biggest universal "right" is completely ignored by this same ultra-conservative-christian-right wing-idiots, and that is the right to die.
if anything, our short time on this planet, should teach us nothing else but, we will die. we all will die, and there is not a single thing we can do about it. we can try to prolong our own lives through diet exercise, medicines, or meditations, however the very apparent truth is- you live, you die. so what of it? i mean these people hold life so valuable, that they fail to recognize that death holds something even more precious and valuable to life. death completes the circle, it is the yang to the yin of existence. through the act of dying, all living creatures plant, animal, or human, transcend these worldly boundaries and become equal, regardless of race, religion, or region, in perhaps our most beautiful and ultimately final moment on this earth. even more fascinating is that after death our bodies decompose and all those protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up everything combine with everything else in the world and we can truly become one with the universe. now how far off is this idea from any religious preachings?
i guess we can argue about this all day, however, my point is- this if you are going to have so much respect for life then you must intrinsically have equal respect for death (which should lead to obvious conclusions about the euthenasia debate). i too have learned another lesson, that life is short, very very short. life, so you better play it all out, otherwise you may be regretful when your life does eventually go full circle. i wonder if the pope has realized this while he lies there with a tube going up his nose? then again i think about times when i have put a tube up my nose, it has been nothing but good times. makes you wonder just a little bit... smile, cause it is only life and death.
